What Abi Taught Us (6 page)

Over the course of 20 years of research, Bonanno, a clinical psychologist at Columbia University and author of
The Other Side of Sadness: What the new science of bereavement tells us about life after loss
, has discovered that coping well in the face of bereavement is much more common than bereavement researchers have previously reported. His studies show that most people bounce back from bereavement in much the same way they do from other adverse life experiences (child poverty, war, natural disasters, terrorism).

His studies also confirm that there is a resilient type of person. ‘We consistently find specific psychological characteristics among people who cope well during bereavement. One such characteristic is the ability to adjust to the shifting demands of different situations. This is a kind of behavioural flexibility . . . Every stress and adversity challenges us in particular ways. The types of struggles people confront when they lose a loved one to a graphic or violent death are different from the stresses that arise when a loved one succumbs to a prolonged illness. Dealing with loss is different from coping with other types of violent or dangerous trauma, like surviving a hurricane or tsunami. By and large, the people who deal best with these different situations are those who can do what it takes to get through the event.'
⁶

Those words sum up my attitude to resilience and surviving bereavement—for me, it's been a matter of doing what I can to get through each hour, day, week, month and year. That's the mission synopsis right there.

By applying the same mixed-method scientific methodology that the likes of Masten, Southwick and Charney, and Reivich have applied to other types of trauma, Bonanno and his colleagues have challenged some of the traditional myths about bereavement. For example, grief experts had previously assumed that expressing emotional pain was an essential part of bereavement; that anyone not doing so (which they term
absent grief
) was demonstrating denial, and that the failure to express this pain would result in what they termed a
delayed grief reaction
further down the track.

One of Bonanno's research team's most consistent findings is that we don't all have to travel through the various stages of grief; nor do we have to necessarily
work through
several tasks of mourning, as many grief theorists have suggested. Furthermore, there is no robust scientific study that has demonstrated the existence of delayed grief. They found ‘people who were well adjusted after a loss were almost always healthy years later. Delayed grief simply did not occur.'
⁷
This provided me with a vitally important piece in my own jigsaw puzzle of grief.

Similarly, Bonanno's findings on the concept of ‘grief work' (a phrase originally coined by Sigmund Freud in 1917 and picked up by Erich Lindemann in the 1940s) exposed the limitations of that theory. ‘As researchers began to devote more attention to the bereavement process . . . it became apparent that, despite the near unanimity with which mental health professionals
endorsed the grief work perspective, there was a surprising lack of empirical support for such a view,' he explained in 2004
.
⁸
Instead, Bonanno and his colleagues suggest there are three common responses to bereavement: some bereaved individuals experience
chronic grief
(the loss overwhelms them and they seriously struggle, sometimes for years, to return to normal functioning); some experience a gradual
recovery
(having initially suffered and displayed symptoms of depression or post-traumatic stress disorder, they gradually, over several months, return to pre-event functioning); but most individuals are resilient in the face of grief in that they maintain relatively stable, healthy levels of psychological and physical functioning. Resilient individuals may experience several weeks of sporadic preoccupation or restless sleep but they ‘generally exhibit a stable trajectory of healthy functioning across time, as well as the capacity for generative experiences and positive emotions'.
⁹

Because bereavement research has historically been dominated by studies involving individuals experiencing acute and chronic grief (known among health professionals as ‘complicated grief '), such reactions came to be regarded as the norm. ‘Bereavement theorists have been highly sceptical about individuals who do not show pronounced distress reactions or who display positive emotions following loss, assuming that such individuals are rare and suffer from pathological or dysfunctional forms of absent grief,' writes Bonanno. In fact, having reviewed all the available research, his studies show that ‘the vast majority' maintain healthy functioning. For example, several different studies following bereaved individuals over time have estimated that chronic grief occurs in just 10–15 per cent of individuals,
¹⁰
whereas bereaved individuals demonstrating resilience (relatively
low levels of depression or distress) have consistently approached or exceeded 50 per cent of the sample,
¹¹
and 60 per cent of bereaved study participants have consistently reported high life satisfaction over the years.
¹²

This is not to say that any of us is immune to grief. I still have afternoons when all I can do is retreat to bed and let myself go in the knowledge that having to cope with Abi's loss is not okay. It's not okay that we have to endure this, and it's not okay that she had to die and miss all the wonderful moments of her life—or even the crappy ones too. One single moment of motorised madness should not have robbed our beautiful girls of decades of living. That's simply not right or fair. But I'm not angry—I don't see the point. Mostly, I still function and, I'm willing to admit, this is something of a relief. I'm surprised how quickly Trevor, the boys and I have managed to bounce back from the trauma of Abi's sudden and utterly unexpected death, and how readily we've managed to juggle sadness and continued living, and mostly maintained full psychological and physical functioning. Even after the death of a child. Discovering that there are plenty of others like us has made me feel less as if we're unfeeling or freakish. Reading accounts of resilient grievers who have continued to suffer negative emotions, misery and longing for their loved ones, but done so while carrying on with full and rewarding lives, somehow makes it feel more okay to act this way.

Because it's so important, I'm going to repeat this one more time. Studies show most people make a good recovery from the psychological and social effects of significant disasters, including bereavement. They also show resilience requires very ordinary processes. Karen Reivich describes these processes as a stew, containing lots of different ingredients, some of which we will
have in plentiful supply, some we may be running low on. We may not like the taste of some of them; others will immediately appeal to us. I like to think of it as a jigsaw puzzle, but, ultimately, it's up to us to find the things that help us process what's happened and relearn how to live in the world we are faced with.

Chapter 4

Accept the loss has occurred

FIVE SHORT WORDS
—
ACCEPT THE
loss has occurred: so easy to write, so hard to do. I wrote the title of this chapter and then just stared at the words for an eternity. How can I tell you simply to ‘accept the loss has occurred', when it is the greatest challenge of all?

Accepting that the loss has occurred is recognised by many bereavement researchers, grief counsellors and therapists as an essential step in successful grieving. William Worden, co-principal investigator for Harvard's Child Bereavement Study, and whose book,
Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy: A handbook for the mental health practitioner,
is viewed by many as the bible for complicated grief, regards accepting the reality of the loss as one of the essential tasks of mourning. The others are to process grief 's pain; to adjust to a world without the deceased; and to find an
enduring connection with the deceased while simultaneously embracing a new life. All of these would become familiar to me in time, but accepting the reality of the loss was the first step.

After Abi died, we worked very hard on accepting as quickly as we could that this terrible thing had happened. That was my way: I regarded accepting the loss as the first step, not out of knowledge of any particular grief theory, but intuitively. It was my logical first big step in survival. This doesn't mean it will be your first step. For some it's plainly obvious; for others it takes time. But, accepting the loss has occurred is a necessary step in adapting to it. Accept that it is irreversible: that no amount of wishing, wanting, urging or bargaining will change the outcome. This terrible thing has happened, I told myself over and over. To me, to us, to her. She is Dead. It is Done. And there's nothing I can do.

I remember the discussion Trevor and I had one week after the girls died. We sat on the rocky wall, just above the beach, and looked out to sea, wondering what to do, what to say, how to go on living in our hateful, hopeless new world.

It wouldn't have been any different if she'd died of cancer, I said to him. We'd be in just the same place right now, bereft and full of desolate, profound and overwhelming sadness. In fact, we could argue, that would have been worse. Watching her die, willing her to live, hanging on to hope and watching it slip away—I wouldn't choose that.

But then I wouldn't choose this—the sudden, abrupt wrenching of life—either.

That's the point, though. In death there is no choice. Death doesn't discriminate between good and bad, young and old, rich
and poor. It is entirely random. We don't get to choose between sudden or slow, nor when it occurs, nor how.

And in my mind, pondering why, or how, was a waste of precious energy, which was suddenly in very short supply. That was energy we were going to need to get through each day, to maintain the uphill struggle for the weeks, months and no doubt years to come. So, taking Reivich's words literally, I decided not to focus my attention on the mechanisms of their deaths—how Abi, Ella and Sally died, or, for that matter, how their deaths might have been avoided. Right now, accepting the loss had occurred, and that we
had to
move forward throughout the rest of our lives without Abi, was going to require every ounce of energy we would have left. I'm fortunate that Trevor could do the same.